Have you ever wondered about Polio? It started in Sweden and then swept across the developing world. Who didn’t suffer from Polio? The undeveloped world.
Polio was caused by a virus that we likely had around us since ancient times. Yet, very few people suffered from it until the twentieth century. It turns out that Polio followed the introduction of flush toilets and clean water systems across the world. Sweden, a socialist country, had the first enforced introduction of universal flush toilets and closed sewer systems. Twenty years, or one generation, later Polio showed up. That’s because an entire generation was raised with no exposure to Polio and therefore, no immunity to it.
What seemed like a wonderful, no brainer, what-could-possibly-go-wrong “advance” killed or maimed millions of people. The law of unintended consequences is writ large and should be printed on our money and every public building.
That is probably the best analogy to this.
And we sure as heck didn’t shut down the economy because of Polio, as bad as it might have been.
Wow!
Thanks. True “unintended consequence”.
( I assume you have factual basis.)
Good info on Polio. I didn’t know that but it does make sense.
I wonder what changed in the last 20 years...
I can think of one thing; computer/ATM/cell phone touch pads. We touch them when go to an ATM or pay for something with a card then touch our faces/eyes/nose an average of 16 times an hour.
Gaming has caused people, young people mostly, to stay indoors and not socialize or play outside where they would build immunity’s.
Science has been playing with all kinds of viruses, germs, bacteria, pathogens in labs around the world. It was only a matter of time when one would escape. Had this one truly been a bad one then things could have turned out much much worse. Like “Walking Dead” worse.